Popular passages

Page 373 - ... the Instinct of Brutes and Insects, can be the effect of nothing else than the Wisdom and Skill of a powerful ever-living Agent, who being in all Places, is more able by his Will to move the Bodies within his boundless uniform Sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the Parts of the Universe, than we are by our Will to move the Parts of our own Bodies.

Page 371 - ... to derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy, though the causes of those principles were not yet discovered: and therefore I scruple not to propose the principles of motion above mentioned, they being of very general extent, and leave their causes to be found out.

Page 372 - And so must the Uniformity in the Bodies of Animals, they having generally a right and a left side shaped alike, and on either side of their Bodies two Legs behind, and either two Arms, or two Legs, or two Wings before upon their Shoulders, and between their Shoulders a Neck running down into a Back-bone, and a Head upon it; and in the Head two Ears, two Eyes, a Nose, a Mouth, and a Tongue, alike situated.

Page 366 - And thus nature will be very conformable to herself and very simple, performing all the great motions of the heavenly bodies by the attraction of gravity which intercedes those bodies and almost all the small ones of their particles by some other attractive and repelling powers which intercede the particles.

Page 375 - And if Natural Philosophy in all its parts, by pursuing this method, shall at length be perfected; the bounds of Moral Philosophy will be also enlarged. For so far as we can know by Natural Philosophy what is the First cause, what power He has over us, and what benefits we receive from Him; so far our duty towards Him, as well as that towards one another, will appear to us by the light of Nature.

Page 373 - Will; and he is no more the Soul of them, than the Soul of Man is the Soul of the Species of Things carried through the Organs of Sense into the place of its Sensation, where it perceives them by means of its immediate Presence, without the Intervention of any third thing.

Page 367 - The vis inertiae is a passive Principle by which Bodies persist in their Motion or Rest, receive Motion in proportion to the Force impressing it, and resist as much as they are resisted. By this Principle alone there never could have been any Motion in the World.

Page 347 - ... Salt and unites with it, and in Distillation the Spirit of the common Salt or Salt-petre comes over much easier than it would do before, and the acid part of the Spirit of Vitriol stays behind; does not this argue that the fix'd Alcaly of the Salt attracts the acid Spirit of the Vitriol more strongly than its own Spirit, and not being able to hold them both, lets go its own?

Page 372 - Now by the help of these Principles, all material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles above-mentioned, variously associated in the first Creation by the Counsel of an intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order.

Page 338 - What is there in places almost empty of matter, and whence is it that the sun and planets gravitate towards one another, without dense matter between them ? Whence is it that nature doth nothing in vain; and whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?